Update: Design and Fabrication Projects for the Vinyl Cutter and 3-D Printer

Things have been moving along with the design and fabrication part of our Maker curriculum. Students in our class have "designed" their initials using Inkscape (available free at https://inkscape.org/en/ ) as a way to become familiar with the functions of the program. They are also creating a logo or other design that will be printed as a sticker or t-shirt transfer using our vinyl cutter. (Our heat press finally arrived! Yes!) We expect to begin cutting the stickers or heat transfer logos during the next week.

Meanwhile we are finally beginning the 3-D design and printing phase in our Maker class. I have been exploring Tinkercad on the Autodesk Tinkercad website. It's a free online 3-D design program found at www.tinkercad.com. When you set up your free account you will have full access to the Tinkercad software and all related online tutorials. Next week we are going to have our Maker students create accounts at Tinkercad and work through the first series of lessons. After students complete the "key ring with letters" lesson, they will design their own key ring with their name or initials. The key ring will be their first project to print on our 3-D printer. We expect this beginning lesson and design process may take two days or more in our class schedule.

Once the student key rings have been designed and saved as STL files, each student will print their own key ring as a way of learning the CURA software that operates our Printrbot Simple Metal 3-D printer. Each key ring should take about 30 minutes to print, so the printing will happen over a period of weeks, assuming the printer works all school day. Students will be invited to come in before school, at breaks, and after school, as well as during our Maker class to print their key ring. Students will work on other Maker projects in Maker class while awaiting their turn on the printer. We will also encourage them to continue working independently with Tinkercad's lessons to advance their 3-D design skills. Once the key rings have been completed we will allow students to start printing other Tinkercad designs of their own, based upon their own interests. We will also make students aware of the Thingiverse website. However, we don't intend to have them just print Thingiverse designs on our printer, unless a student can demonstrate how they modified someone else's design by adding their own design touches. We don't want them just printing "something cool that they found out there," as that won't enhance their design skills. We want the students to become fluent in 3-D CAD through use of the 3-D printer.